Hospital upgrades

Two Ontario hospitals are undergoing renovations that will cost millions now, but save a ton of money – and emissions – over time. Partnered with Honeywell, Cambridge Memorial in Cambridge and St. Joseph’s Healthcare in Hamilton plan to decrease their overall energy costs with upgrades that will hopefully pay for themselves. A SolarWall air heating system is among the energy-efficient upgrades and retrofits planned.

Air passing through SolarWall’s perforations is heated and redirected by a fan into the building. Cambridge Memorial is using three of them to reduce their carbon footprint.  It will apparently be the largest of its kind, at five stories tall.

While hospitals are a relatively new domain, Honeywell is no stranger to eco-friendly retrofits. They’ve also been involved in a similar program of retrofits in a Pennsylvania school district, expected to save about a million dollars annually.

Recently, more hospitals have been built with an eye on energy efficiency. One prominent example is the new Alberta Children’s Hospital. Opened in 2006 in Calgary, it was built with triple-glazed windows and energy efficient, state-of-the-art mechanical systems.

Victoria’s new Royal Jubilee Hospital is set to be completed in 2010. Plans include a green roof and LEED-accepted building materials. Even the process of construction will be environmentally conscious, incorporating a sediment tank to prevent building materials from washing off the site. As a result, it has already been awarded LEED Gold status. No surprise, given British Columbia’s well-publicized mandate to make all new infrastructure projects worthy of LEED Gold.

Indeed, LEED Gold status “championship” gold worth its weight in…well, gold.